A conversation

Why don’t you love me the way I want you to love me? Am I sucking all the color out of you? Am I selfish? Should you love me the way you want to? Should I accept love as it is given, as it is able to be given? Why isn’t it enough? Do I want drama, passion? Do all women want that? Do we all give up when we realize you don’t have the emotionshormonessensitivityunderstandingneed that we do? Do we accept you as other? Do we keep searching until we fill the need? Do children fill the need? Do friends? Does our work? Do we? Does anything? Does satisfaction exist, or is it a passing sense of filled hunger until our bellies go empty again, overwhelming at one point, a few hours later, yearning for more like it was never there? Does my childhood give me this need? Is it wrong, other? Am I wrong? Do I crawl into myself and wait for it to pass? Do I crawl into another? Do I keep crying? Do I force myself to stop?

You need to relax. Let’s go get something to eat.

When you won’t devote yourself to me, am I foolish to devote myself to you? Should I be distant, as the moon, as you are? Should I cut my ribs open and reveal all? Does that matter? Would you be horrified by the blood? Would you be entranced? Would you be disgusted? Would you be sympathetic? Would you pity me? Would you play in it? Would I be engrossed in the smile on your face? Would I let you?

I love you.

Am I overemotional? Am I different for feeling this way? Would others mock me? Would they see truth, or a pitiful form shuddering in the corner? Would they dare to touch me, dare to try again when I rebuffed? Is this my fault?

You’re overreacting.

Do I accept reality? Do I put on a pretty face? Do I dig into someone else’s mind, take them into the dark pond with me? Do I carry them into the depths, so I have company? Do I grip their wrist when they try to pull away? Do they still hear me when my voice is warbled by the water that climbs up my throat? Can they see my eyes still shining? Can they see I’m not fine? If I tread to the top, and keep treading, how long will it be until I sink, not by choice, but by exhaustion?

You can swim, you’re a good swimmer.

I don’t want to. I don’t want to do anything right now.

Can’t you do it for me?

How can I stay here with you when you won’t even commit to being here tomorrow?

Why are you being silent? What is it? Say it. You blame me. You don’t want to be here anymore.

I didn’t say that. You don’t understand. This isn’t the life I wanted.

Nobody gets the life they wanted. They get the life that happens.

I don’t want to believe that.

Is this life ( that you’re in control of, by the way) better? Is this working for you?

You don’t understand. I’m drowning.

If you’re drowning now, you’ll be drowning tomorrow. What’s going to pull you out of it? Decide to get out of it.

In the night, sometimes I do. I rip off my pajamas and I run through the grass and I jump over fences and I get bruises, scrapes, cuts. Then I wake up with the dark water in my chest, rising up, spilling out. I gulp in air in quick gasps, water sloshing against my ribs until my eyes close and I force it to retreat back into the sea. Until I fall back into dreamless sleep. Lately, I haven’t been dreaming at all.

Will you ever understand? I can’t control my emotions. They pour out when they want to. They claw their way out if I cage them up. They become first in line for the next thing I say. They push their bony arms out my mouth, out my eyes, out my body. I say I want truth, when all I want is release.

I’m not happy here. I feel like I need to get away, whether that’s wrong or not.

Go exercise or something.

Run in a circle? Run back to the same point I left? Rinse off my emotions in the shower?

Go shopping, get a coffee.

I don’t need a new shirt, I need a cabin deep in the woods where no one will hear me or see me.